Florida`s Amazing Growth To No. 4 Brings Problems And Opportunities

January 4, 1988

`We`re Number Four!`` Whether Floridians end up cheering or weeping at that news will depend a lot on what they and their political leaders do about it.

As expected, Florida has moved from No. 5 to No. 4 among the states in population, the U.S. Census Bureau reports, displacing Pennsylvania with a population of 12 million people. One-third of Florida`s residents live in Palm Beach, Broward or Dade counties.

By the year 2000, Florida will be No. 3, ahead of New York state and behind California and Texas. The growth rate -- 23 percent since 1980 -- is awesome.

Twelve months ago, Florida took the No. 5 spot away from Illinois. Twenty- six months before that, Florida took the No. 6 spot away from Ohio.

That kind of growth brings good news:

It creates a much-watched megastate where nationwide trends are born.

It invigorates Florida with fresh ideas and fresh energy, as newcomers from other states and countries settle here and put their education, job experience and personal skills to work.

It propels, stimulates and diversifies Florida`s economy, creating new jobs, new businesses and customers for those businesses.

It brings greater political clout to Florida in its dealing with other states, in Congress and in selecting presidential electors. By 1992, Florida`s delegation to the House of Representatives probably will increase from 19 to 22; by the year 2002, to 28.

And it brings a larger share of federal grants based on population.

But fast growth also brings much bad news.

Growth sometimes means economic and political pressure to develop in inappropriate areas, in violation of proper land-use planning and without accompanying public facilities.

Growth means more crowding, more strain on inadequate government resources, more threats of environmental pollution, more destruction of wildlife habitat, including that of endangered species, and more paving over of open land now used to recharge the underground water supply.

Growth means an endless stream of newcomers -- 893 every day -- that runs far ahead of Florida`s ability to finance and supply a wide range of basic services.

To overcome the bad side of growth, several steps are necessary:

-- State and local governments need to do a much better job of channeling and regulating future growth. That will require aggressive efforts to require that growth be permitted only if accompanied by government programs and facilities needed to serve it.

-- Florida`s politicians need to abandon their traditional games of catch-up and crisis management and instead emphasize long-range planning and anticipatory problem-solving.

-- State lawmakers need to adopt comprehensive reform of an inadequate, unfair, narrowly-based tax system that fails to keep pace with population growth to fund unmet governmental needs.

Growth is inevitable. How well Florida guides this growth will have a lot to do with the quality of life enjoyed by the newcomers and the natives, their children and grandchildren.